viral

For a while there was a popular meme involving cats and slices of bread. That might be a reason to give up the Internet entirely, but some (bored?) cat owners began photographing their cats with slices of bread worn around their seemingly content furry feline heads. Well, now (disobedient) dogs are in the meme spotlight. Dog owners have been submitting photos of their misbehaving pooches with signs explaining their misdeed over at Dog Shaming. Hey, dogs that dig through the trash: Just because you are known as “man’s best friend” doesn’t exclude you from taking responsibility for naughty behavior. That said, it is tough to stay mad too long at these dogs — aw, look at that face!

5. Korean sensation PSY’s “Gangnam Style” is back in this weekly video roundup for the third time this month. The man himself appears at a Dodgers-Giants game, meetings which are notoriously fraught with the specter of violence between opposing fans, but it’s all love when “Gangnam Style” is piped through the loudspeakers.

5. Summer school is in session this week with the video in the number 5 slot. The Internet loves cats, but how well do you understand them? In this entertaining yet educational video, we learn how exactly cats always land on their feet, with the help of GiGi, a super cute and accommodating house cat. Thanks to high-speed motion-capture video, we now know the fascinating science behind this perennial mystery.

With yet another week coming to an end, here are five new videos that people were sharing and discussing around the digital water cooler.

5. What do James Van Der Beek, Danny McBride, Zooey Deschanel, Larry King, David Spade, Kristen Stewart, Matt Leblanc, Snooki and Justin Bieber all have in common? Well, some people dislike them and tweet about it. In this video clip, Jimmy Kimmel gets these celebrities to read these mean tweets. Aloud. For your entertainment.

This week marked the two-year anniversary of the first photo ever uploaded as a test on a mobile photo sharing app that would eventually become known as Instagram. Before it was released for iPhones, it was called Codename (give ‘em a break — they’re developers, not marketers). And to foreshadow what would become one of the more popular subject matters for Instagram users, the first photo uploaded featured the super-cute dog you see above. By comparison the first photo ever uploaded to the Internet was an absolute hot mess.

A good number of the videos trending this week are music-related, so I’ve rounded up the five best here for your pleasure. If you’re viewing this at work or at a library as a little mental recess, I highly recommend you turn up your computer speakers. Your coworkers or fellow students will shower you with gratitude.

In this week’s collection of the best videos going viral around the Interwebs, we have something for everyone — from extreme sports to fans of Cookie Monster, especially those of you who still can’t get enough of “Call Me Maybe” (looking at you, Clay!). If you don’t like any of these five picks then I’m just going to go ahead and call you a “sonofabitch” (OK, not really, but watch the number 4 video below for the reference).

Am I the only one who thinks that this week has been so much more awesome since the discovery of the Higgs boson was announced on Wednesday morning? Most of the jargon and explanations are waaaay above my high school AP Physics edumacation, but as scientists and smartypants people peel back another layer of this crazy universe we live in, paradoxically it seems that the world has become just a little more magical. I love it! I was hoping they’d also found a tiny magic school bus in their research, but alas. Between the Higgs boson news and Independence Day, this week has been pretty fantastic. July 4th of course means good eating, including delicious watermelon, which also happens to be the video that kicks off this week’s best trending videos that went viral.

Nicolas Cage has given us, the American audience, an eclectic range of roles in a wide variety of movies (over 60 films) over the years. He has also provided a lot of material for the blogosphere and meme factories on the webz, some of which I’ve collected below for your viewing pleasure. The Internet’s fascination with him stems from his enigmatic personality and the roles he’s played. Just kidding, it’s because he’s nuts. This interview in particular is a good glimpse into the beautiful mind of this actor in particular his answer to the question “You mention LEAVING LAS VEGAS. Is winning another Oscar important to you? Or is it now more, ‘Well, I did that. Now I just do what I’m going to do’?”

While New Yorkers have been obsessed with this week’s heat wave, Europe took a break from its economic woes with a little bit of soccer. Kicking off this week’s top trending video in the number five slot is something from the Ukraine and France match.

What do Colin Powell, Jimmy Fallon, The Roots, and Tay Zonday have in common? Answer: A song with lyrics that makes Avril Lavigne’s Sk8er Boi sound like J’avais rêvé d’une autre vie. It’s also the number one viral video, or rather ties for the number one slot this week.

So Ridley Scott’s PROMETHEUS landed in theaters this weekend, and while $51.1 million is nothing to joke about, a group of talking animals did beat it in the box office. The reaction, at least among my friends who saw it, was tepid. Some things about it were great, others…not so much. That said, the cinematics blew their minds and the story provided some food for thought. IndieWire served up their good, bad and ugly thoughts on the film, and people across the Internets are not only chiming in, but having a lot of fun riffing off the film:

Zombies have leapt from the movie screen into our streets and this week’s trending videos capitalize on this hot news item. The CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) had to release a statement recently that stated zombies did not exist. “CDC does not know of a virus or condition that would reanimate the dead or one that would present zombie-like symptoms” wrote agency spokesman David Daigle. Good try David. After finishing writing this I’m headed to my safe house deep in the woods.

With summer temperatures (good) and the accompanying humidity (bad) officially here, it’s now bona fide beach season. If you’re looking for something a bit more exciting at the beach other than getting sunburnt while napping or catching up on Hunger Games (is this a dated pop culture reference already?), then take a page from the pranksters in this week’s #1 video.

With summer here, it means the bicycle season is in full swing. I’ve actually been surprised by the number of friends and acquaintances I have who never quite mastered the art of riding a bike. If you’re reading this and still apprehensive of bicycling, then I suggest you watch the number five video below as a source of encouragement.

If you had a stressful week at work just know that it was nowhere near as bad as what the Wisconsin resident featured in video number three had to go through. And here’s hoping you have a relaxing weekend, like the cat in the video number five. So, read for more trick shots, Sponge Bob and a little gear-shift supercut.

One of my favorite apps in the past couple months for my iPhone has been Cinemagr.am (FYI: This is not a plug!). It’s an obvious derivative inspired by both Instagram and artsy gif images or “cinemagraphs,” which I’ve previously blogged about here, that have proliferated all over the Internet. However, as these 20 examples collected by BuzzFeed demonstrates, it’s a pretty fun app. Here are a few that I’ve made in the past.

If you were like me, this week basically consisted of discussing the awesomeness that was THE AVENGERS (I’m convinced Joss Whedon incepted me with that film) and if not then listening to the Beastie Boys in memory of Adam Yauch. That said, the Internet viral machine continued its job and here are five videos that made the rounds this week.

THE AVENGERS became a bonafide hit after making over $200 million over the past weekend and in the process setting a record for the biggest opening before adjusting for inflation. That’s some serious “geek” spending power right there. I’m happy for director Joss Whedon and after the success of this film the (Skrull filled) sky is the limit for him. The pop culture impact this film is having can be seen across multiple sandboxes in the web as a point of reference ranging from The Economist to Botticelli. Or rather with apologies to Botticelli, Julian Totino Tedesco created the above Avengers-themed illustration inspired by the master painter’s “The Birth of Venus.” Tedesco’s painting was one of many by various artists commissioned by Marvel to create Avengers covers in the style of famous paintings and genres. If Seurat were alive today and an Avengers fanboy he might’ve painted something like this.

All the rain and the gloomy overcast clouds this week in New York City seemed to make it plod along slower than usual, but at least we made all made it to the month of May. So everyone, let’s pat ourselves on the back for that. Let’s also applaud ourselves that we didn’t appear in…

In this week’s list of the five videos I noticed trending around the digital water cooler, I provide some tips below for aspiring filmmakers or marketers in how to ensure that their videos are a hit. One, include an inflatable superhero costume wherever possible. Two, insert cat into scene.

Aside from an asshole-y cat, the other videos in this week’s list of top trending clips can be filed under “inspiring” and “tearjerker.” Also, all five videos this week can be found under “how to spend 30 minutes of your time watching something rather than accomplishing that important to-do item you’ve been meaning to do all week long.”

The collective meme mind exploded this afternoon as we learned that the silly, yet insanely popular, “submitted her own signed submission. The meme has become officially meta. And now I must pick up the pieces of my brain that exploded all over my desk.

As I’ve said before, you can’t fail with a cute animal as your opening act on the Internet. Regular readers should know my dog-centric preferences in this regards, but this week’s lead in the number five slot stars the otter, our favorite floating-on-their-back creature. Otters previously went virally popular for the fact they hold hands in the water to prevent each other from floating away in rough waters (cue the “awww’s”).

A user asked on Quora, “What’s it like to watch a character based on you or someone you know in a film?” I’ve always wondered about this and unsurprisingly, this question went mildly viral. Thomas Goodwin answered with seemingly direct knowledge of this experience. He wrote, “My wife is the delightful lead character and I’m the bad guy in the film LIKE CRAZY.” As soon as I read that I totally went “OMG” because this is just like that one episode of How I Met Your Mother where Ted takes a date to a movie, written by his ex-fiance’s husband, which he discovers is about their relationship with Ted cast as a huge jerk who drove his ex-fiance into the loving arms of her now husband.